Another EVE Online Thread

[Jon]

I'm back in the game, after a year long idle I've finally found some time in my week again I can give to it. Back in hi sec spamming level 4s in a one man corp to build my isk reserves, then I think I'll hit some station trading before bombing out to null sec again. My toon is heavily biased towards caldari missile boats but I've been attempting to cross train amarr, which has been helped by those wonderful khanid ships too.

[RedImperator]

Honestly, I think the biggest problem with drones as a weapon system is the amount of real-world skill you need to use them properly. It's real easy, if you're not paying attention, to lose a substantial chunk of your DPS (and a pile of money); they're the only weapon system that can be damaged or permanently knocked out (other than by overheating or running out of ammo). It's a fair tradeoff, seeing as they don't require ammo and can't be jammed, but it does make more skill than "select target, push pew-pew button". Dedicated droneboats especially are trickier than gunboats, because there's usually another system you have to manage for them to be fully effective (typically neuts and some kind of EWAR). Again, a fair trade given how versatile droneboats are, but it does take more thinking than a straight-up gunboat.

[Jaevric]

Friend of mine is making noises about joining a nullsec corporation as a dedicated planetary exploitation...er...*interaction* player. He's just started, playing Minmatar. I don't know how likely it is that a nullsec corp would be interested in a player who has minimal interest in PvP and mostly wants to loot planets down to the bedrock for profit, though. He also may be the only person I've met who actually enjoyed the Astrometrics tutorial missions, and is excited about that end of things, though he hates the combat in the game.

Personally, I finally got Tech 2 drones on my Gallente character and I'm looking forward to getting to play with them after work today. Thinking about training up medium projectile guns for my Myrmidon instead of using hybrids so capacitator isn't an issue.

RedImperator, I have to admit, I sort of like the additional complexity of a drone boat (though my experience has been limited). It just doesn't feel like the drone boat's damage output compares to a dedicated missile boat, though that may be due to my lack of skills (IC and OOC) rather than an actual flaw with the ships.

[Lagmonster]

I also couldn't give a fig for combat, because I'm not very good at it - even against noob players. I like the economics of EVE online, where the only thing I lack from not being in a corp is access to raw capital. Mostly I have fun - even if I don't turn mind shattering profits - as a small-time trader running arms and ammunition to people so I can watch them blow each other up with it.

[RedImperator]

RedImperator, I have to admit, I sort of like the additional complexity of a drone boat (though my experience has been limited). It just doesn't feel like the drone boat's damage output compares to a dedicated missile boat, though that may be due to my lack of skills (IC and OOC) rather than an actual flaw with the ships.

I don't have EVE fit with me, but I wouldn't be surprised if with all skills on V, a missile boat does more raw DPS than a drone boat. The thing that you have to remember about drone boats is that they don't fight like missile or gun platforms. Half a droneboat's functionality comes from its ewar and utility highs. A typical Arbitrator fit, for example, will have full flights of medium and light drones for DPS, but it will also pack one or two tracking disruptors to gimp enemy turrets and a mix of small and medium neutralizers and energy vampires to shut down an enemy's tackling, propulsion mod, and possibly his tank and his guns (incidentally, this means an Arbitrator is meat against a Drake, but no ship is perfect for every situation). Droneboats make up for the lower DPS with the ability to cripple the enemy so he can't bring his superior DPS to bear. That's part of why they're harder to use effectively, but it's also why a lot of pilots have trouble dealing with them.

[Mr. Coffee]

Drone boats can be absolutely evil once you learn to fly them right. As Red says, the drones are your DPS, but your real utility comes from all of the EW and logistic support options available to you when you don't have to use your high slots up on guns and missiles. This is especially true of ships like the Gallente Dominix-class battleship or Ishtar-class HAC, where you get some fairly substantial bonuses to drone damage and hitpoints, as well as the largest drone bays of any sub-capital ship. In the Domi's case you can mount a fairly huge armor tank, either active or buffer, and without having to clutter up the highslots with guns you've got six slots to use for things like nuets, remote armor reppers, ect. Another thing to consider is that damage drones aren't your only option, especially for PvP. You can very easilly add to any EW you bring on the ship or in the fleet as a whole just by adding a rack of light or medium ECM drones. Another option is keeping around a rack of light/medium armor or shield rep drones, adding additional remote rep capability to whatever logistics you bring.

Drones are nifty little critters, and using them does add an extra layer of management to your overview for combat, but when used properly drone boats can very rewarding to fly.

[Prannon]

Take three or more Dominix's. In the highs, put some Remote Armor Repairers. In the mids, put a couple of large capacitor boosters loaded with Cap booster 800s. Have some tackle, MWD, stasis web, and any utility of choice. Probably a sensor booster with scan resolution scripts loaded or an ECCM module to prevent jamming. Then in the lows put a pure tank. Trimarks in the rigs. In the drones, have some Sentries or some big ol' heavy drones, probably Ogres. Ogre IIs would be spiffy.

Put these Domi's in a fleet. Now add some fast tackle to the fleet and maybe even some ECM boats like Falcons or Rooks or what not. You have created a nearly impossible fleet to beat. Those spider tanked Domi's will be extremely difficult to break for anyone, and there's practically no way to stop those drones from hitting the target once they're set loose. I've had to face off against three Domi's set up this way before, and our fleet had a time of it before we finally got it figured out. But it's very difficult nonetheless.

[RedImperator]

Yeah, Domis can be really effective as light carriers. They're not quite as useful in big blob fleets for the same reason missile boats aren't--delayed damage means the primary is dead before the drones get there--but if you fill the highs with remote reps and launch utility drones (more remote repair or ECM), they're a potent addition to a remote-rep BB fleet.

That's honestly the neatest thing about the Domi and Ishtar--they're really flexible. Think of them as light carriers or heavy logistics--hell, I'm pretty sure a RR-fit Domi is cheaper than a Guardian. I've also seen them used as cyno-bait, a role they perform quite well.

[Mr. Coffee]

and there's practically no way to stop those drones from hitting the target once they're set loose.

It's easy, make sure you have a PvP overview setting that includes drones (Fighters, Fighter/Bomb, Combat, ECM, and Logistic drones), target and shoot the drones. Sentries and Heavies can be a slight pain because they have tanks about on par with a well tanked figate, but a rack of hobo IIs or HMs w/TP support make short work of them. The problem in the Domi's case isn't the drones, it's all the high slot/med slot options it can field (Though it have a large enough drone bay to field two full racks of heavy or sentry drones with another 125m3 worth of medium/light combat or logi drones).

[Commander 598]

Seems there may have been an uptick in botting lately... Shame nobody would ever like my idea of solving it.
Spoiler

Since there's a snowball's chance in hell of actually making mining entertaining, I propose that CCP just make the autopilot able to do vaguely complex tasks. People would stop using 3rd party bots if only because the official one is much easier and in some cases cheaper to set up...and you don't get banned for it thus enabling you to sort of "control" their influence. This won't stop hardcore RMT bot work but it will keep the average player from going after the feature filled 3rd party bots because they just want a functional ISK income without having to spend all day pretending to actually play the game to play the game.

Or at least that's my take.

[Dartzap]

Meanwhile, in The Happy world of Darto...

The Corp, and indeed, the Alliance has been dragged into a war over a supposed racial slur. So far no evidence has been presented, and these guys are ex-mercs, and are, annoyingly, despite only having 7 active members, pummelling our arse. Though I do have to say seeing the alliance come to our aid with 50 odd PVP ships was nice. Station camping is perhaps the dullest, shittest thing around, but sadly thats what these guys like to do...so we're currently trying to draw them away, but thats easier said than done.


The current theory is they are either greifing for whatever reason, or they are no longer ex-mercs and are doing a job for IT, as our alliance is now one of a few groups in the area where IT are on the prowl (There was previously a fairly prolonged battle with another alliance down in 0-0 to secure some space, which, when IT started pouring in, became a full blown coalition, and then a rapid withdrawal to Empire, living my mob in supposed control of a system.....

Admittedly IT arnt known for using mercs...

Will be nice to have this war over, I'm running out of mullah (again) and need to start grinding those L4's...

In positive news, though: Ishkurs = awesome. That is all.

[Mr. Coffee]

What corp/alliance you with now, Dart?

[Dartzap]

What corp/alliance you with now, Dart?

Fenrirs Dogs of War/Omega Vector.

We're more carebears than anything, so dont laugh when you see the killboards I *always* end up loosing my ship. Always....

[Mr. Coffee]

Fenrirs Dogs of War/Omega Vector.

We're more carebears than anything, so dont laugh when you see the killboards I *always* end up loosing my ship. Always....

I'm with Secret Squirrel Readiness Group/Wildly Inappropriate now. Also, don't be so hard on yourself for being carebears. Hell, look at Mostly Harmless. Despite being complete and utter carebears they somehow still manage to hold sov (how they do it, not sure, but I think it has something to do with the rest of the NC saving their butts when they fuck up horribly).

[Prannon]

Heh, nice Mr. Coffee. My corp, Fusion Death, is in Fidelas Constans these days. Red is there too, but the twerp hasn't logged in for a while. We're taking a bit of a hammering these days and it's all we can do to hold it together. :/

WIdot is a good group of guys though. You all look out for us down in Pure Blind and I've got a couple of good buds in NOX back from my IRC days. Hopefully I can fly with ya sometime.

[RedImperator]

I let my account lapse. It was to the point that I was able to log on for maybe half an hour at a time, a few days a week. You can't make money that way, and if you can't make money, then it's no fun losing ships.

[Prannon]

Nah, I'm half teasing Red. Do miss having you about since it's kinda cool to be flying with guys from SDN, but I understand real life time constraints.

[Mr. Coffee]

Heh, nice Mr. Coffee. My corp, Fusion Death, is in Fidelas Constans these days. Red is there too, but the twerp hasn't logged in for a while. We're taking a bit of a hammering these days and it's all we can do to hold it together. :/

Yeah, I was pretty surprised when I moved out into Fade/Pure Blind at all the former CVA "holder" alliances and corps out there. Hell, there's a couple of few guys from CVA in WI., so it's like Providence, only without all the damned role-players laming it all up and better reds to shoot at.

WIdot is a good group of guys though. You all look out for us down in Pure Blind and I've got a couple of good buds in NOX back from my IRC days. Hopefully I can fly with ya sometime.

Mostly what I do is a bit of light ratting to keep the wallet topped off enough to keep myself in ships before heading out with fleets from L-C t go beat the crap out of people in Cloude Ring and Fountain. THough we did have a lot of fun (and lost a lot of secstat) going out into GalFed FW pace to pick on the faction warfare nubs. Some of those guys are so horrible they make EVE University look downright competent.

[Prannon]

Mostly what I do is a bit of light ratting to keep the wallet topped off enough to keep myself in ships before heading out with fleets from L-C t go beat the crap out of people in Cloude Ring and Fountain. THough we did have a lot of fun (and lost a lot of secstat) going out into GalFed FW pace to pick on the faction warfare nubs. Some of those guys are so horrible they make EVE University look downright competent.

Hey, if you're ever on between 0500 and 1100 on Saturdays, keep an eye out. I like to do cruiser roams around then to mess with the reds. And yes, I'm usually the one FC-ing them, and so far the guys I've been flying with have had a lot of fun. Gotten some pretty good kills. Last night while we were out we got hot dropped by a Thanny. That was interesting...

[Mr. Coffee]

Hey, if you're ever on between 0500 and 1100 on Saturdays, keep an eye out. I like to do cruiser roams around then to mess with the reds. And yes, I'm usually the one FC-ing them, and so far the guys I've been flying with have had a lot of fun. Gotten some pretty good kills. Last night while we were out we got hot dropped by a Thanny. That was interesting...

[/quote]

I like doing cruiser/BC roams. We do a fairly regular shield-based BC roam that usually gets a good amount of kills. Last couple of nights not so much, reds seem to keep fucking off right as we find them (SPIES SAPPIN' MY INTEL CHANNEL!). Not that I've been kill whoring to much. Been flying logistics lately and the besty you can hope for with that is either slaving some offensive drones to one of the DPS boats or adding a TP if you're in soemthing like a Scimitar (why the fuck is it that no one in EVE can properly pronounce that ship's name?). But it's kind of it's own reward when you've got three or four basilisks cap, the cap chain is up, and someone tries to primary you. Two or three basilisks throwing down four large shield transfer arrays can hold back a whole hell of a lot of DPS.

Good times. Also, if you ever get bored with FCON, give me a shout. My corp's hiring good pvp pilots and everyone could use another decent FC.

[Prannon]

I like doing cruiser/BC roams. We do a fairly regular shield-based BC roam that usually gets a good amount of kills. Last couple of nights not so much, reds seem to keep fucking off right as we find them (SPIES SAPPIN' MY INTEL CHANNEL!). Not that I've been kill whoring to much. Been flying logistics lately and the besty you can hope for with that is either slaving some offensive drones to one of the DPS boats or adding a TP if you're in soemthing like a Scimitar (why the fuck is it that no one in EVE can properly pronounce that ship's name?). But it's kind of it's own reward when you've got three or four basilisks cap, the cap chain is up, and someone tries to primary you. Two or three basilisks throwing down four large shield transfer arrays can hold back a whole hell of a lot of DPS.

Good times. Also, if you ever get bored with FCON, give me a shout. My corp's hiring good pvp pilots and everyone could use another decent FC.

Heh! Nice! Who usually commands your roams? Komoz? Or do you have a guy in house who does it? I'll keep an eye out if I ever see a roam. Feel free to contact me at this same name in game if you'd care to have a chat. I did the same for Red and look where I ended up.

As far as FCON is concerned, I'm actually in pretty deep. ^^; Got myself into a position of some responsibility and what not, and I'm actually very loyal to my corporation. Got myself a real good one, I do. I'll keep your offer in mind though, just in case I do decide to move on from Fusion.

[Mr. Coffee]

Heh! Nice! Who usually commands your roams? Komoz? Or do you have a guy in house who does it? I'll keep an eye out if I ever see a roam. Feel free to contact me at this same name in game if you'd care to have a chat. I did the same for Red and look where I ended up.

The BC roams tend to exclusiely be in-0house WI. ops. For some reason we don't seem to workout so well when we fly with some of our neighbors. Especially MH, got those guys are fucking terrible. My last corp, Hell's Horsemen, was in MH briefly. Our KB stats got 80 shades of fucked uyp flying with those guys and they were more interested in carebearing than actually killing people and breaking shit so we split. In the first five days after we left MH we made more kills than we had in two months with MH, so it wasn't us, it was their fucking horrible FCs and utter lack of anything resembling an aggressive fleet doctrine. Since we've been with SSRG we've been averaging a pretty steady amount of kills weekly, and the corp does a lot of things to encourage fleet participation and PvP, like bonuses for making over 150 kills a month or getting more kills than the PvP directors do. I do so much PvP now that I actually have to schedule in time for ratting or logging in on one of Jita alts to scam people so my wallet don't run dry.

Hey, not sure if you're into it, but if you know of any good bomber/recon/black ops groups send me a mail in-game. Name's Angus McAWESOME.

[Temjin]

Some of those guys are so horrible they make EVE University look downright competent.

Stupid question time.

How is EVE university, really? I'm part of a fairly small corp that's part of an alliance that's getting their ass kicked in one of those stupid high sec wars. After the war, the CEO of my corp wants to enroll us all in EVE university to give us some pvp knowledge and experience, since we're all carebears. I'm not so sure of the idea, especially after I read this comment.

I much prefer the idea of doing low sec roams until the corp as a whole get good enough that our ships no longer consistantly explode when we take them into pvp.

[Mr. Coffee]

How is EVE university, really? I'm part of a fairly small corp that's part of an alliance that's getting their ass kicked in one of those stupid high sec wars. After the war, the CEO of my corp wants to enroll us all in EVE university to give us some pvp knowledge and experience, since we're all carebears. I'm not so sure of the idea, especially after I read this comment.

EVE U is kind of a mixed bag. There are a few of them that really aren't that bad at PvP, but those tend to be their "instructors" or what have you. Their typical student or graduate pilots are terrible.

For example, there's this guy, Doobles, who was the FC of an EVE U fleet that meandered into low-sec, talked a lot of shit at my fleet, and while they were busy doing that our scout probed them down and warped us in right on top of them. We primaried Doobles first, and after that their fleet lost any semblance of order. Better, Doobles came back to the fight twice in a friggin' noobship only to die twice again. Didn't order his fleet to withdraw, or even flee and dock up at the station in system, he actually tried to get them to keep fighting a fleet that was comprised of a lot of pilots with much greater skillpoint totals and better ships. That fit Doobles had on his hurricane, as fail as it was, was actually one of the better fits. There were pilots there that had absolutely no business flying anything bigger than a frigate roaming around in things like Hurricanes with mixed up gun fits, no DCUs, mixed armor/shield tanks, no rigs, empty high slots, ect. And their fleet tactics seemed to consist of "Everybody just mill about incoherently and shoot at whatever you feel like", no calling primaries, no pre-aligning to celestials, nothing.

The next day they brought a 250-300 man fleet to the system that Hydra Reloaded (the alliance I was in at the time) was staging out of. They had us out numbered 5 to 1, they had a lot more fire power in system than we dd (lot of battleships), but they had no grasp of aggro mechanics and we blasted the living shit out of them playing undock games at the station and letting the station guns do mot of the work for us.

They might be good for getting new players out of the two-week trial account high-sec funk, but other then that I thought they were quite possibly the most inept opponents I've ever faced in EVE.

[Mr. Coffee]

I much prefer the idea of doing low sec roams until the corp as a whole get good enough that our ships no longer consistantly explode when we take them into pvp.

Actually, stay the fuck away from low-sec until you get semi-proficient at PvP and get a good understanding of how the game's aggro mechanics work. Low-Sec is actually more dangerous to new pilots than 0.0 is most times. Your best bet is to find a 0.0 alliance that's looking for a new corp or simply break up your existing corp and join one in a 0.0 alliance if you want to learn PvP-fu.